New World is finally here, but some players are struggling to get into the game, spawning some amusing reactions to some lengthy New World queue times.
As players rushed to get into Amazon's new MMO yesterday, player counts topped 700,000, turning New World into one of the biggest Steam games ever. With servers capped at just 2,000 players - and player queues for certain worlds reaching ten times that - some players were left waiting for hours for their turn at the game. Naturally, they took to the game's subreddit to help pass the time.
As a result, the community is filled with memes referencing the long wait. The top post on Reddit simply reads "I'm 16 but I will pass my queue position to my children one day so hopefully they can play on Hallheim," referencing one of the game's servers.
Other posts, borrowing famous memes from The Avengers and Interstellar, pay tribute to those who spent a little too long in the game's character creator, eventually finding themselves stuck behind thousands of people who breezed straight through to ensure they got their spot.
While the community seems pretty jovial right now, there are a few cynics out there. One post suggests that the server queues could be a cunning strategy; Steam's refund policy doesn't allow games to be returned after you've played them for more than two hours. With many players spending longer than that simply queuing, the refund window will have expired long before they eventually access the game.
Lengthy queues aside, New World does seem to have gotten off to a relatively stable start. Some players have found themselves kicked and forced to re-queue, but apart from one notable wobble, the servers don't appear to have caught fire yet. Presumably as initial hype wears off and server capacity is gradually increased, it'll get a little easier to find a spot.
It's not as simple as just adding servers - here's why big online games tend to struggle at launch.
